Abstract/Summary

The northern Red Sea is a climatically very sensitive, restricted, and desert surrounded marginal sea that is located between the Mediterranean and Afro-SW-Asian monsoonal rainfall regimes. Marine sediment cores with high sedimentation rates from this region document pronounced climate variability making them well-suited to study climatic changes from around 2000 to 2500 BCE. Sediments from the brine-filled Shaban Deep in the northern Red Sea document multi-decadal environmental changes during the mid-Holocene possibly linked to shifts in the AO/NAO system and solar variability. The anoxic sedimentation is disrupted around 2200 kyrs BCE and our records indicate a positive sea surface salinity excursion and increased basin ventilation that likely relates to a major “evaporation event”. The timing and strengths of the environmental changes around 2200 BCE suggest that this event is the regional expression of a major drought event at 2200 BCE. Though paleorecords from the nearby northern Gulf of Aqaba show dryer conditions around this period but not as pronounced as in the Shaban Deep record. The comparison of these records with other regional paleoenvironmental reconstructions exemplarily underlines the complexity in evaluating the climate change around 2200 BCE.